


Threads of Fate

by Syntaniel



Series: What Fate Sees [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014), d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:56:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4736963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntaniel/pseuds/Syntaniel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the smallest actions decide it all. Choosing to take a left or a right. Making that one step forward. A careless action can destroy something even before it starts.<br/>In the wake of so much loss, Fate does not want to see any more loss out of carelessness. When it is time for Athos to choose...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd  
> just something that wouldn't get out of my head

     "I'm going to drink." The words were heavy and even Athos could hear the bitterness in the back of his voice. There's firelight somewhere to the side of him and rough timber at his back but all he can feel right now is the void inside his chest.

  


     D'artagnan doesn't move from where he stands, leaning on the spar beside him, but looks at Athos consideringly, "Do you want to be alone?"

  


     Athos can't even look at the other man. But he can feel the young man at his side, can practically feel the compassion radiating off him. "No."  He doesn't say anything else and grits his teeth at his own admission. 

  


     D'artagnan's dark eyes study him, firelight flickering off the olive skin, creating shadows that hide his expression. "Wine?"

  


     Relief fills Athos fast enough to make him dizzy and he pushes off the wall to hide how suddenly unsteady he feels. "Yes."  _God, yes._  


  


  
_The wine doesn't help with the dizziness_ , Athos thinks later. Or maybe it's just the heat of D'artagnan's body, leaning up against his side, giving him as much privacy as he can while making sure that there was no way Athos was going to forget that he was not alone this night. Rotating the latest bottle carefully in his hands, fondness wells up in him as D'artagnan waves the server over with food, still without looking at him. He slugs back the last dregs of wine, feeling the bite of bitterness in the back of his throat.

  


     D'artagnan has been true to Athos' request. He has not spoken again since they arrived, merely stayed strong against his friend, resolutely refusing to leave his side. Athos cannot speak with the void still in his chest but the warmth of the young man at his side warms him despite his melancholy. D'artagnan's hands brush his as he passes over some food, the rough calluses rasping against his own and Athos feels something like lightning shoot up his arm in response. He jerks away, startled by the strength of the sudden longing that fills him, and D'artagnan looked at him in query.

  


     Athos refused to respond (what would he say after all?) and digs into his meal instead. A helpless sort of anger wells up in his chest as he stabs at his food. He can't do this. He can't do any of this anymore. Whatever this is between him and D'artagnan...

  


     He manages to finish the meal, though as soon as the plate was gone, he could not tell you what he ate. Undefined swirling rage is beating at his chest, filling the void, feeling like a bird trapped beneath his breastbone. Athos burned with it. Equal to the heat of the man at his side.

  


     Athos couldn't bear it. He jerked up and pushed away from the table almost violently, making it halfway to the door before D'artagnan caught up with him, throwing some coins on the table as he scurried to catch up with his friend. "Athos!" There was confusion and surprise in his voice and it grated on Athos' nerves even as the world blurred with drink.

  


     He slammed out the door without answering, afraid of the rage barreling through him. But that last bottle had certainly not been the first and he listed as he stalked away, careening towards a wall before a strong hand arrested his progress. Athos snarled, rage breaking loose. In the back of his mind, some part of him was horrified, some part of him knew down to his bones that he was about to do something terrible, something irrevocable. His hand clenched in a fist, he opened his mouth twisted to speak when suddenly, a voice echoed through the air, "Hold!"

  


     And the world stopped.

  


     D'artagnan wasn't there anymore. Athos heart pounded against his breastbone when he realized that, dread pooling in his stomach. His head whipped around, searching frantically, but the world remained blurred around the edges and still he could not see his companion. He couldn't see anything beyond the shadows shifting all around.

  


     "You will not find him." The voice said again. Athos turned and drew his sword in one smooth motion, that skill not impaired by the drink. A woman was walking towards him out of the shadows. She was tall, wearing a long flowing dress that somehow made him think of robes. Her face was too blunt to be pretty but it was striking in its openness. Athos did not sheathe his blade - his wife had taught him far too well for that.

  


     "Who are you? Where is my companion?" His voice was rough but he was proud that it showed none of the fear that was churning in his guts.

  


     "Impertinent."

  


     "Foolish."

  


     The words seemed to come from the very air around him, echoing in the unnatural silence. Athos jerked around but still saw no one. "What is this?"

  


     The woman stopped just out of sword's reach but somehow Athos knew she wasn't afraid. She titled her head consideringly and her long curls fell over her shoulder. "You were about to choose." Her voice was strong and measured in the silence.

  


     Athos frowned, shaking his head to try and clear away the remnants of the wine, "I don't know what you're talking about. I was..."

  


     She cut him off, "About to choose." Her slanted eyes narrowed at him. "Knowingly or not, you were about to choose."

  


   Impotent rage built up in his chest again and Athos growled, "Enough of this. Where is D'artagnan?"

  


     "Fool."

  


     "This is a waste."

  


     The words echoed on the air again but still Athos saw no one. The woman threw a glance over her shoulder but her face remained impassive. "He is intact. I wished to speak with you."

  


     "Who are you?" Athos moved subtly forward, his sword still out.

  


     The woman looked almost amused. She stepped forward smoothly and the tip of his sword... went through her? She stood there with the tip of his sword where her stomach should be and Athos felt no resistance. His eyes widened but he did not move, "What are you?"

  


     She tilted her head consideringly, "I am the one who weaves. I set the pattern. I am the one who measures." Her lips tilted slightly, "You would know me as Lachesis."

  


     Athos swallowed carefully. "What have you done with D'artagnan?"

  


     "Do you care?"

  


     "Would you win him back?"

  


     The echoes of the voices seemed to taunt him and Athos growled as the shadows, "Give him back!" He didn't care what they wanted, they could have it, so long as they gave D'artagnan back.

  


     Lachesis seemed to study him again. "I have not taken him. I have taken you."

  


     Athos flinched but then relaxed. For some reason, he believed her. "What do you want?"

  


     Her eyes unfocused, like she was looking beyond him. "You were about to choose."

  


     "You already said that."

  


     Her gaze sharpened on him, narrowing again. "I wish for you to choose wisely."

  


     Athos fought the urge to sigh as weariness washed over him. "What was I about to choose?"

  


     "Your future." The light flickered and Athos was sure he saw the flash of brown eyes, the richness of olive skin.

  


     Confusion formed knots in his guts and his voice was rough when he responded, "I don't know what you're talking about."

  


     Lachesis was a scant foot away from him now, close enough to raise a hand to his cheek that he felt like the ghost of a breeze. "I have spent millenia watching the pattern. Weaving the threads as they command. Incorporating choice after choice to make the fabric of the universe." Athos shivered as she drew fingers that were not there down his face. "I know when the pattern is about to make a change. To become set or to separate. I know when the choices are made."

  


     " _You should not interfere."_  


  


_"Let him choose as he will."_

  


     Athos flinched at the vehemence in the whispers around them. "What do you want?" He repeated slowly.

  


     Lachesis dropped her hand. "For you to choose wisely."

  


   "What choice?" He was half shouting, half growling. His vaunted control shredded by this hallucination.  _It has to be a hallucination. One too many bottles of wine_. He refused to believe this was real. "What are you talking about?"

  


     She turned and suddenly he could see it, see them. Him and D'artagnan, in the alley outside the Tavern. D'artagnan's hand on his arm, concern and pain written all over his face. Athos turning with a snarl to... Athos didn't know what he had been going to do. "D'artagnan," he breathed the name.

  


     "Yes," Lachesis said as she waved her arm at the scene. "This will be the point. This point will decide the pattern. Now is the time to choose."

  


     Athos' eyes burned and he forced himself to look away from the scene. "I don't know what you're talking about. He is my brother."

  


      _"Liar!"_  


  


_"This will come to nothing."_

  


  
 Her expression didn't change but somehow Athos knew his answer had disappointed her. "That is not all you wish him to be." Her voice was implacable.

  


     Athos closed his eyes. "I can't..." His voice choked off. "I cannot. I will not drag him down with me."

  


     Her expression remained unchanged but she nodded slightly, "And this is why I took you." She moved towards him again. "You must choose - I cannot alter the pattern. I can only set into motion the designs made by your choices. But I would have you choose with a clearer head. If these threads are to be separated, this pattern undone, then I would have it be because you chose it so and not because the wine chose it for you."

  


     His teeth ground together in frustration. "There is no choice to be made. It cannot be. It will not be. There is no choice here." If his voice was bitter, well, he couldn't help that at this point.

  


     "There is always a choice." The words dropped into the air as solemnly as if they had been carved into stone. Her eyes, flat and unfathomable, burned into him.

  


     "I will not be the death of him!" The shout echoed through the chamber before Athos realized it had been ripped from his throat. He sheathed his sword almost violently and looked away. "He will be the best of us all and retire with honors when he is old and grey, with a dozen children to follow after him." He nearly spat on the ground, "Not saddled to a broken wreck of a man with nothing to offer but an empty title and a shadowed heart."

  


     This time, when Lachesis looked at him, it was with pity. "And this is why I took you." She moved closer to him. "For you are laboring under a misapprehension and I would not have it color your decision."

  


     "And what is that?" The anger visibly drained from the musketeer, leaving him mostly tired.

  


     " _Be careful..."_  


  


_"What you wish for."_

  


  
 Lachesis tilted her head again. "Though I weave only the final choice, I can see all the patterns. Those chosen and those left untraveled." There was something in her voice, Athos suddenly did not want her to finish. But she spoke on, "There is no pattern, no future, no path that can be followed where Charles D'artagnan lives to see old age."

  


     Athos staggered under the words. "No." It was choked off in his throat.

  


     "Some things cannot be changed," Lachesis said. And suddenly, the shadows were alight with images. D'artagnan, in farmer's clothes, dying at the end of a bandits sword. And again, falling while wearing the crimson tabard of the Cardinal's guard. A middle aged D'artagnan, hard and covered with scars, alone, standing over fallen bodies wearing matching blue and silver of the Musketeers, a bullet ripping through his throat. D'artagnan, with the first threads of silver in his hair and blue tinged lips, huddling under a cloak with someone Athos could not see, snow covering their shoulders as they lean against a tree, his eyes falling shut and his face going slack. As a man in his prime, hanging from chains, stripped, skin flayed from parts of his chest until a blow to the sternum leaves him gasping and then choking to death on his own blood. Pushing a figure in familiar leathers out of the way while red blossomed over his chest, falling with the slightest of smiles on his face. Grim faced, in battered leathers himself, taking a sword to the chest to gain the distance to impale a man in black so that they would fall together. So many lives and every one ending in an early death.

     Athos couldn't look away even as horror overcame him. He couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. This could not be. A sound he couldn't recognize, a cry of denial, rang out in the air and it took him precious moments to figure out that it came from him.

  


     Lachesis' gaze was not unkind. "There is no choice that does not lead to death, Musketeer. That is the way of man. You have only the choices you make along the way, the paths you choose to travel."

  


     " _And who you travel them with."_  


  
      _"Or without."_  


  


     "Why..." Athos had to try again, swallowing hard before he could get the words out. "Why are you doing this? What do you care about the choices I make?"

  


      _"Sentiment..."_  


  


_"Guilt..."_

  


     With the second echo, another woman came out of the shadows. Twin to Lachesis but with hair tightly bound in a single braid. Lachesis looks at her briefly before speaking. "I have spent millenia watching the patterns. Measuring the threads. When I come to the end of a thread..."

  


     The second figure raised her chin in a gesture that was almost defiant, "Then I cut them." A dark gaze, fathomless and deep, looked at Athos and he could not resist the urge to shiver. That voice was cold and carried the weight of eons behind it, her voice implacable. 

 

     Lachesis nods, almost mournfully. "Then they are cut. There have been so many threads surrounding yours that reached their end." Her eyes again looked at something distant Athos could not see or understand. "So many threads surrounding you both."

  


     The second woman shook her head, "It is not our job to judge. The thread is spun, measured, woven, and then, at the end, it is severed."

  


      "So many threads," Lachesis repeated softly. She still had not turned to look at Athos again. "So many threads in such a short time. Cut. Severed. Separated. Warped." Athos didn't dare breathe into that pause and Lachesis shook her head, as if to clear it. "And your thread and his, twining together from the day you met as if my sister had plied them together as she spun."

  


     From her side, the second woman,  _Atropos_  he thought distantly, made a derogatory sound before turning sharp eyes to Athos. "And so she gives you the gift of knowledge."

  


     Athos had never felt such desperation in his life. "But you've told me nothing! How can I tell which choice leaves him alive? What do I have to do?"

  


     A third woman comes forth with sneer on her lips, "And still you do not understand." She was shorter than her sisters, stocky more than slender, with a dozen dozen tiny braids in her hair that gave a soft rustle as she walked. The images continued playing around him, more and more, an infinite number of deaths, painting the shadows with red, swirling together until he could not tell which was which. "He will die. He will never see old age. He will never die peacefully in bed. His own choices make that impossible."

  


     "I'll stop him! I'll send him home." Athos didn't recognize the pleading sound in his voice.

  


     Lachesis shook her head. "You cannot take his choices from him. You can only choose for yourself. You cannot change the length of his life. You can only decide what role you will play in what remains to him."

  


     Heart breaking, Athos dragged in a ruined breath. "You are sure of this?"

  


     Clotho nearly smiled at that and Atropos laughed as the two women flanked Lachesis where she stood. "You doubt the weaver of fate?" He could no longer tell which was speaking.

  


     Pain throbbed through Athos' head and the women seemed to fade without moving. "Wait! What..."

  


     Lachesis raised a hand to stop him. "You can choose only for yourself. So choose. And choose wisely."

  


 

     And with a swirl of black and pain, time seemed to start again. Athos was back in the alley, moving towards D'artagnan with a snarl on his lips. Pain and confusion crashed through his head and Athos jerked backwards, his shoulders hitting the rough brick of the wall, his hand falling to his side. He shook his head, panting, as D'artagnan gripped his arm. "Athos!" There were layers in that voice that Athos had never heard before, never allowed himself to hear. Concern, fear, pain, hope and...

 

      _Choose._  


     The memory of a hundred different deaths crashed into Athos' brain, washing away the last effects of the wine. Desperate blue eyes raked D'artagnan's face, seeing the echoes of what he'd heard in that voice. Distantly, Athos wondered if there truly was any choice in the end even as he surged forward, slowing at the last to gentle the kiss he laid on D'artagnan's lips. After a moment, a moment that sat hard in his gut like lead, those lips moved under his. D'artagnan's hands came up to hold his hips, ever so loosely as if the younger man was afraid of holding too tight. 

 

     After what seemed like forever, Athos pulled back, nearly gasping. "Please," he choked out, memories of death still thick in his mind. D'artagnan's hands spasmed on his hips as he pulled him closer. "Please."

 

     D'artagnan shuddered in his hold. "Athos," he breathed. "Anything." 

 

     And somehow Athos could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant just that, that he didn't understand - not at all - but he would give Athos anything. Even this. There was so much in his gaze that Athos couldn't fathom, couldn't possibly believe he deserved. He leaned his forehead against D'artagnan's. "Stay with me."

 

     Something sharpened in D'artagnan's gaze even as his hands came up to cradle Athos' face tenderly. "Till duty or death, Athos."

 

     Athos hands fisted in D'artagnan's tunic at the words. He could not ask for more. Would not. He knew better than anyone how their duty lay. He could only swear his own silent oath, even as he pulled D'artganan in for another kiss,  _I will stand with you. And when the end comes, it will find me at your side and I will not be parted from your side no matter who shears the thread._  



End file.
